


Then He Will Crown a Tranquil Life

by DontDateTheApostate



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Discussion of Childbirth, F/M, Gen, Maternal Mortality, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26628418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontDateTheApostate/pseuds/DontDateTheApostate
Summary: When the Dread Wolf joins the Inquisition, he does not do it alone.Tangential kmeme fill, centered around the question "what if Solas accidentally fathered a child in the interim between waking and arriving in Haven?"
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, minor past Agent of Fen'Harel/Solas
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Then He Will Crown a Tranquil Life

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt can be found here:  
> http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15060.html?thread=59048404#t59048404

_"And then she said that if I wanted to take a dip-"_

_"- Tried to get me to buy three of them for a copper! Can you believe -"_

_"- Right in the Arl's well! In front of everyone! I swear, Mahla nearly had kittens when she heard -"_

The high, wordless shriek of a woman in pain splits the air, and the conversation pauses.

The scream fades. A heartbeat of anticipatory silence, and then the voices pick up again, as if there'd been no interruption at all.

 _"- Like I couldn't tell it from the price of beets! The_ nerve _of those Marchers-"_

_"- Not born yesterday, I told her, and she slapped me! Right in the -"_

He does not belong here.

It's the only consistent thought that's passed through his mind in hours.

Nearby, a child scratches flowers into the dirt with a broken broom handle. A group of women chat over a hissing pot, frying flat pieces of dough in week-old oil. Three men pass a chokeweed beedi by an open window, blowing smoke out into the street. One of them hacks and spits on the floor, while another snorts piggishly at his own joke.

How can they _possibly laugh_ –

A gentle breeze sends the smoke curling across the room, and he stifles a cough in his sleeve. The smell is horrid and it reminds him, perhaps too closely, of brothels and taverns, of the places he would visit when his revolution was young. He loathes it, even to this day, but the scent is familiar, and if he closes his eyes, he can almost, _almost_ pretend…

A shriek from the other room, longer and louder than he thought possible. The conversation pauses, just long enough for the screaming to taper off, and then picks right back up, uninterrupted and entirely unconcerned.

This was a mistake.

He should not be here. He should leave. He should go before he –

He stays seated.

Another wordless wail rises, then crests, before finally breaking into a sob so soft he can barely hear it through the wood. He winces, mutters a low curse under his breath, and then embarrassed, looks around the room. No one has so much as glanced in his direction. He might as well be the crate he sits on, for all the attention he commands.

Which is a relief really. It means that it's not too late – that perhaps he could still leave, if he wishes. He could turn away, and no one would ever be the wiser, no one would even _care_ to stop him…

The door opens suddenly and Solas startles to his feet.

An elderly, shrew-faced woman – the matriarch of the house – steps through, carrying a basket filled with bloody rags. She stops when she sees him, looks him over and _tsks_.

"Still here, are you?" She asks, nodding towards the door.

Another plaintive cry. His nails dig into his leg.

"Yes," he manages.

"Not going so well in there," she observes.

He nods once, more as an indication that he'd heard her than as any sort of invitation to continue.

He can't stop staring at the rags.

"Not looking good at all," she repeats, with all the indifference of one remarking on the weather.

Honestly, what could he _possibly_ say to that?

"Thought you should know," she continues, when he doesn't add anything more. "That way you can start preparing for the worst. Might be your woman'll pull through, of course – seen stranger things happen. But I wouldn't bet my boots on it."

"She is _not_ 'my woman'," he spits, with more force than the accusation deserves.

As though the distinction particularly matters at this point.

The matriarch fixes him with a cool, measuring look. "Won't be much longer, one way or another. Half hour, tops, if she can manage the pushing. If not… Figure we'll be lighting two funeral pyres tomorrow."

Panic pulls him forward, as sharp and reflexive as it is unbidden. Before he can even think, he finds himself standing in front of the door, palm outstretched and pressed flat against the wood. He stops, recoils, starts again, pulls away, and tries reaching slower, before finally lowering his hand back to his side. The woman watches the whole display dispassionately, balancing the basket against her hip.

"I should be assisting," he says, eventually, the words falling flat around him. He does not move away from the door.

The matriarch snorts.

"Got a poultice that can put this blood back where it belongs? Some salve that'll stitch her insides back up?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "Then sit back down. Or go outside and pace, if you think it'll help. She didn't want you in there then, doesn't want you in there now. 'Nother pair of hands isn't gonna do her any good."

He closes his eyes, and sucks a breath in through his teeth.

Damn her. Damn her, and that worthless pride of hers, that wouldn't suffer him seeing her spread out and wailing on the birthing bed. Not even if it cost her her life. Or perhaps, he's beginning to suspect, _because_ it'll cost her her life.

Stubborn woman. Stupid, stubborn, proud, woman.

"So I should simply sit by," he hisses. "And wait for her to finish bleeding out at the hands of fishwives and washerwomen?"

Said washerwoman's expression tightens. "My sister’s been bringing babes into this world since the Blessed Age – knows all the tricks there is out there. Sometimes, there isn't nothing she can do. Problem's not with her."

His nails dig into his palm.

Forty years. This quickling midwife has spent forty years delivering children, and she is considered their _expert_. He has spent longer mastering single spells than this healer has devoted to her entire life's work.

_Forty years._

He wants to throw something.

"What a relief it must be," he grits out instead, through clenched teeth. "To fall back into helpless ignorance when such _extensive_ experience fails you. I'm certain it is a great comfort to the woman who have died in her birthing bed."

The look she gives him could have flayed a lesser man. "Birthing's always risky," she says, with an edge like a paring knife. "If you didn't want to take the chance, then you shouldn't'a stuck it in her in the first place. Man your age, ought'ta know to pull out – not that knowing does either of you a lick of good now."

Her words strike deep, piercing something cold and hateful in his heart; all his anger and grief and resentment towards this broken world and it's spiteful little shadows, flitting through ruins and mouthing their god-king's words, squatting in squalor, cringing and cadging leavings from shelmen lords. He _hates_ them in that moment – he truly does – for turning his sacrifice into dust, and as he turns towards her, fury burning in his throat, to insist that he be allowed inside – for all the good it'll do – or to snap at her, or at himself, or _everything_ , he realizes the room has gone completely quiet.

It's only then does he notice how cold it has become. Something wet strikes his forehead. He blinks, looks around, and then freezes when he catches sight of the windows.

His first thought, absurdly enough, is how beautiful it looks. Frost creeping it's way up the curtains, the walls, coalescing in the rafters. Perfect little fractal shapes, as lovely and utterly out of place in the mid-autumn heat as a hothouse orchid blooming in a midden heap. Above his head, tiny little flakes of snow have begun to fall, drifting through beams of sunlight like dust motes. A second one strikes his cheek and melts, leaving a cold, damp trail down the line of his jaw.

No one speaks. No one moves. Everyone in the hovel stares him down, like a room full of silent, terrified little rabbits who have finally spotted the wolf in their den. Some are pressed against the walls. Others hover over abandoned chores. Every single one of them looks ready to bolt.

The silence stretches, then strains, then frays, until it is a thread's breadth away from tearing in two. When he is just about certain that it has gone on for longer than he can bear, a sudden pop of burnt cooking oil splits the air like a whip-crack, and startles a whimper from someone. All at once, the tension breaks.

A flood of murmurs follows, too cluttered and indistinct for him to tease out individual threads of conversation. Not that there is any need. The fear in their voices makes perfectly clear the subject of their suspicion, and where that fails, the rather deliberate distance fills in any gaps.

One of the men smoking the beedi mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like ' _apostate_ '.

Apostate.

Solas blinks, then stiffens, a red flush spreading across his cheek as the realization sinks in.

Someone else takes up the whisper, and then another, and suddenly it's passing around the room in a hiss, like wind rattling through the branches of a tree.

_Apostate._

Fearful and mistrusting, as though _he_ were the broken thing, as though they _know_ , as though…

_**Harellan.** _

He cannot stay inside. He needs air, or space, or… He needs… he needs…

"Please excuse me," he mumbles, to no one in particular, as he pushes through the front door and into the fading light.

Once outside, he finds himself at a loss.

Contrary to the matriarch's advise, he doesn't pace. The air is still too thin, and he can barely navigate between the listing piles of wood that pass for the alienage's architecture anyways – he isn't even certain he would be able to find his way back to the midwife's home, were he to leave. But standing still does little for the knot of tension that's settled between his shoulders, and he doubts the inhabitants of the house would feel any better knowing he's lurking right outside their door than they would if he were to return inside.

Eventually he compromises, and walks three houses down to what might have once been a vegetable garden, where light slips only a bit reluctantly between the buildings. He settles against the wall, letting the sun warm his face and eat away the chill that's sunk into in his fingertips.

_Apostate._

Never before, not since his earliest forays into the slave pits of Arlathan, has he felt so acutely out of place. Every word, ever gesture, _everything_ , from the sight of the faded, wind-beaten banners on the heart tree, to the crooked, cancerous way the houses rise and spill over one another like an overturned toy box, is a keen a reminder that he does not belong here, in this slum full of tired, angry things that look just enough like his people to set his teeth on edge.

_Apostate._

Not a word, not even the _idea_ of a word, that had existed before he woke. Now it is a partition, a condemnation of the natural order, a tacit designation of monstrosity. A _thing_. If ever he had doubted this world was broken, that word alone, whispered by a room of frightened, empty things, so far removed from their nature that they cowered at the sight of the simplest displays of magic, solidified the knowledge into certainty.

How could she hide here, among them? How could she bear it for five months?

More to the point, did she truly find the alternative so repellent, that she would rather bleed out in a dismal little shack, surrounded by indifferent shades, than return to his fold?

It's not a thought he can bear to linger on.

He is already so very weary of this world, and of this weight he must carry. A part of him, a small part, but one that grows ever more insistent the with each minute he spends here, considers simply leaving. Just walking out of the alienage, and out of this city, and out of this age, back into the Crossroads, to sleep until the Fade claims his mind fully, and his body wastes away to dust.

"Decided to leave, did you?"

He opens his eyes to find that the matriarch has followed him outside, and that she’s brought her aura of contemptuous disapproval with her.

Wonderful.

"It did not seem wise to linger," he replies, and lets the words hang between them, pregnant with an unspoken threat.

They stand in tense silence for a few moments as she looks him over, lips pursed, unimpressed. She alone appears unintimidated by his earlier display. He wonders if she plans to lecture him for his magic, or even threaten him, this bitter, elderly child who has seen fewer years than he has seen centuries.

He wonders what he will do if she tries.

Then, all at once, she seems to come to a decision. Her expression shifts, softens, deflates, and the lines around her eyes smooth away. It's not a kind look, or even warm really, but he finds sympathy somewhere in her gaze, and it's enough for him to hold his tongue and wait.

"This your first?" She asks him finally, walking over and stopping a few paces in front of him.

"No," he tells her, uncertain of why she would even care enough to ask.

She frowns, her mouth pressed into firm, skeptical line.

"It has been a very long time," he concedes, only half aware of the admission as it slips free.

He regrets it immediately. The memory burns sudden and fierce like wine poured in an open wound. He shuts his eyes and tries to shove back against the savage grief that follows, so sharp, it threatens to push the air from his lungs. He can't think of that. Not now. Not here.

"Fine then. I won't press."

He opens his eyes and blinks away the moisture before it can collect.

"Apologies. I was…"

"Brooding?" She finishes as her lips twist into something that is almost, but not quite, a smile. "I've tended enough births with Liya to know how these things go. Your woman may not survive, but the babe might yet. Focus on that."

He is not certain how to feel about that.

"Were that it was the other way around," he says after an uncomfortably long pause, nearly too soft to hear.

The admission is cruel, but true. Were it his choice, he would have gladly taken her over the child. There is no room for distractions in his plans, and he does not have so many at his side that he can afford to lose even one gifted agent. And Lanasta _had_ been a good agent, clever and quick to adapt – the perfect set of eyes to map this strange new world.

Too kind though. Too soft. She had never been able to harden her heart to what must be done. It is why he was fond of her, truthfully, why he respected her council, why he had caved, just once, when he was weakened and vulnerable, reeling from betrayal, the splintered remains of his Slow Arrow still clutched in his trembling hands. Why he had accepted her offer of comfort, of a warm body and a moment's sweet release.

Looking back, perhaps it was inevitable that she had betrayed him as well.

 _'Finally caught up with me?'_ Her voice echoes, low and insidious in the back of his mind. _'Well you're too late_ _–_ _your child is doing your work for you.'_

His thoughts must have shown in his expression, because the woman doesn't look pleased with his answer.

"You don't seem too broken up by her dying," she sniffs.

Is he? Perhaps not. There are too many pieces at play right now for him to properly examine his feelings on the matter. Guilt, certainly. Regret. He has no desire to see her dead, especially not from the consequences of his own weakness. And there is anxiety as well. Two days is not nearly enough time to process the sight of her swollen belly, and all the implications carried in it. Perhaps even a hint of sadness – their affections for one another had fallen well short of love, true, but there'd been a mutual respect, maybe even the stirring of genuine fondness that could have grown into more, in another time. In another world.

But there is also the hurt, the frustration, the anger. The loss of an agent, a trusted agent, is never a pain felt lightly, and a second betrayal so soon after the first cannot be forgotten – though perhaps he would have let her be, had she not…

_Felassan was right._

That had stung the most.

And yet, he would have her back at his side, if she could have been swayed. A fools errand, perhaps. He knows best of all that a bleeding heart, once pierced, is not so easily stanched, but it was why he had ordered her located, not killed, and why he had come to her in person – a hand before the sword, to offer one final chance.

Now, it seems that neither option will be necessary.

"Then you know very little," he tells her, and leaves it at that.

"I know she's been here for months. And I know you showed up the day before the babe comes. Some'd say it looked like you were here to claim what was yours."

He bristles. Despite the absurdity of the accusation, his first instinct is to defend himself.

"My arrival was entirely coincidental. Coming for the child would necessitate knowledge of both the pregnancy and the fact that she was in confinement – of which I had neither."

She snorts. "Bit more than a coincidence, if you ask me – shoved here by the Maker's hand more like. Supposing you're telling the truth." She pauses then, as a thought occurs to her. "But you still stayed. Could'a run off the first chance you got – most men in your place would. But you didn't."

"A decision I have come to regret."

The woman frowns, shaking her head, and for the time since they'd met, he thinks sees approval in her eyes.

"You stayed," she repeats.

The softness in her voice surprises him. He looks at her, _really_ looks, and it is in that moment that he notices the network of scars that crisscross her face, folded so tight between the wrinkles that they are invisible without scrutiny. He wonders, distantly, at who (and it is a _who_ , not a _what_ _–_ of that he has no doubt) caused them, and for what purpose, and if they still pain her after all these years, when suddenly, he hears a soft cough from behind his shoulder. The thought is abandoned, and he turns to find a girl – one of the midwife's apprentices – cringing in a dress spotted with blood.

She is a small, pitiful thing, with a countenance that speaks of someone who drew the short straw in an unwanted raffle, and all the tight-lipped fearfulness to match. Large, wet, eyes that dart like a mouse, hands bunching into the folds of her skirt as though it were a lifeline. Her throat bobs when she notices him watching her, and she looks away, like she expects expects him to start spitting sparks if she stares too long.

"What," the matriarch says when she deems the silence as having gone on too long.

It comes out more like a command than a question when wielded by her. The girl's knees quakes. Her gaze jumps wildly, from him, to older woman, and then to her feet, while her hands twist ceaselessly at her apron, smearing the blood where it's wet, and sending flakes of it showering to the ground where it is dry. If he were ever uncertain of the tone of her message, the sheer anxiety radiating from her erases any doubts he might have held.

The three of them wait at an impasse, her fidgeting with her apron, the older woman watching with obvious irritation, and him, still with cold dread. The silence stretches for a moment longer, before the girl finally plucks up her courage and darts to the matriarch's side. She ducks her head without making eye contact, and then murmurs into her ear, too low for him to hear.

The matriarch's frowns deepens – though he's begun to suspect that this is not an indication of mood, so much as a permanent fixture of her face. As much a part of her as her sharp nose, or pointed ears, or the lines bracketing her petulant mouth.

"That so?" she asks. "And the girl?"

His heart stutters. He listens, ears straining to pick out the words, but her voice is still too soft for him to hear properly, and the girl will not meet his eyes. He turns instead to watch the woman's face, and what he sees leaves little room for doubt.

"Such a waste," she says, shaking her head. "Well, go on, get cleaned up. Work's not done yet."

She turns back to him without waiting for an answer, her expression grim. By the time he finds his voice, the girl already is gone.

"Lanasta?" He asks, his throat dry.

She shakes her head.

He nods, releasing a breath he feels like he's been holding all day. He'd known, of course, had known for hours, but a part of him had hoped, despite it all…

_Your child is doing your work for you._

It is done. He had accomplished what he had come here for. The rogue agent no longer poses a danger to his goals, and he is free to focus his attention on more pressing matters – now without fear of compromise from any outside force.

He feels filthy.

"And the child?" He forces himself to ask, voice barely above a whisper.

She looks at him, then does something odd with her mouth that he realizes, only much later, must have been a smile.

"It's a mixed blessing, but," she pauses, tilts her head.

"But?"

"But you have a son."

_A son._

His hands tremble. He turns away and raises one, runs it down his face, presses the palm of it against his mouth.

It does not stop the shaking.

He should leave now. Walk away. His task is complete, and every sensible inch of him screams to turn and go, to run if he must, before he makes another terrible mistake. The woman would not stop him, and it would be easy, certainly wiser in the long run. Kinder, even, for all involved. Lanasta had not seen t it fit to inform him of this child, and he cannot find it in him to doubt her judgment. And yet.

And yet.

He lets the hand drop back to his side, and turns back towards her.

"Take me to him."

He never claimed to be kind. Least of all to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> lmao this prompt is literally five years old. I only recently rescued some ancient drafts from my brick’d laptop, but I was ~~dragged back in~~ inspired by the video bioware put out to poke at the only fic that was anywhere close to being post-ready. So on those clown shoes go. Honk honk folks, who else is excited for DA4? :v))))


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